Triggers never work. How about giving the insurance industry until 2013 to make good or the previously approved public option becomes law. If thing get way better in coverage and costs, congress can always stop the public option. It's kind of an opt out for the government and it guarantees that something will happen.

It is true that my house is on fire, has now caught all the neighbors' houses on fire, and has already caused untold death and damage. The flames also seem to be rapidly growing in intensity. But before I totally overreact and call the fire department, I'm going to give the conflagration three years to shape up and put itself out.

Great ! Now all we need is Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.

Yep... but not the way you think

"I think we as Democrats will rue the day...

Absolutely.
I voted yesterday in Tucson:

With 98.6 percent of the polling places and about two-thirds of the early ballots counted, Democrat incumbent Karen Uhlich maintains a slim 593-vote lead on Republican challenger Ben Buehler-Garcia in Ward 3, while Republican challenger Steve Kozachik holds an 1,199-vote advantage on Democrat incumbent Nina Trasoff in Ward 6.

But I won't show up for the Democratic party in 2010 if they feed me a trigger. You hear that Gabby Giffords? You need my vote. Desperately. Without the public option, I will watch you die on the vine.

If they try to sell a trigger as HCR I am immediately leaving the Democratic Party, an affiliation I've maintained for over 30 years.

Well the dems finally have a leader and it's a woman..a republican woman. Who would have guessed?

CDW, I'd wager most Democrats won't be following Olympia Snowe.

At this point, I'd say that it's unlikely any bill will be passed.

if soullite is correct, and that very well may be the case - particularly if Reid slows this process down, then we should probably all just vote Republican. they may govern really really poorly (see Bush, G.W.) but at least they can sorta-kinda run things while the Dems can't run anything at all. the Repubs will have successfully outflanked the President, large Democratic majorities, and clear public opinion on the centerpiece of the Democratic agenda and one of the central issues debated in the 2008 Democratic primary campaign. it takes a special kind of stupid to screw this up as badly as the Democrats have done.

Well, bdop4, unless you are worth millions/billions of dollars, do you really think they care? There has to be something more that can be done to get the attention of dems or pubs than a threat to leave the party. They wouldn't notice unless you ignited a bomb on your exit, and included a clear message telling why the bomb. No, until people they know start to suffer from mal-healthcare, there will be no reform. Americans don't understand subtle. They only understand personal tragedy. Notice how much Katrina changed the political landscape? No wealthy white people got hurt, and probably profited, so life goes on.

I'd like to say what I think would work, but it might get me in trouble...maybe I am as chicken as those I criticize.

...before I totally overreact and call the fire department, I'm going to give the conflagration three years to shape up and put itself out.

Now that's change I can believe in.

Mind you, I continue to believe that putting out your fire immediately is the best course of action. Call it, the "fierce urgency of now." But please understand that it is merely "a sliver" of my overall plan to help you.

So I'm not going to insist on it.

...before I totally overreact and call the fire department, I'm going to give the conflagration three years to shape up and put itself out.

now, i happen to think we should put your fire out with water, but others think we should try gasoline, and still others lime jello. so before we start to put out your fire, we are going to send all three ideas to the CBO for scoring. It may be a couple of weeks. Then we'll have to go on vacation, but we'll take up your fire as soon as we get back.

understand, however, that we still may not be able to put out your fire just yet because if the firefighters work, we have to pay them, and some of that pay could, in theory, be used to pay for abortions. and we can't have any public money going for legal abortions. so we have to hash that out before we put out your fire.

and we've noticed that Marler and theAmericanist aren't so keen on you. it is an election year, and we do have to be concerned with re-election. so way may have to focus on things that make them happy before put out your fire, just to make sure we don't lose their votes. having consensus before we put out your fire seems the prudent, moderate course for us to take.

Then, once all of that is done, of course we'd love to help you with your fire. But can you send us a check today for whatever you can afford to help attack the menace of fires - $50, $100, $500 or more?

(and this would all be much more humorous if it weren't the tragic truth that you can substitute "cancer" for "fire" in the above posts and have it be 100% true for real, suffering Americans watching the HCR debate.)

All one has to do in order to figure out the best plan for all Americans is throw out a proposal and see what happens to health care insurance stock prices. If they go up, it's bad for us; if it goes down, it might work.

I thought Joe LIEberman already pulled the trigger?

One word: reconciliation.

Chris, do you know much about the actual reconciliation process, its limitations, the outsized and arbitrary role of the parliamentarian, and the extreme reversibility of legislation that goes through this process?

I don't like the trigger either - too often it has to come back to Congress for budget authorization and appropriation, and it never gets triggered.

However, that doesn't mean a trigger has to work exactly like that. Case in point (and someone correct me if I'm wrong), the law authorizing work at Yucca Mountain, NV.

For years, Clinton kept Yucca Mountain from going into operatin. Previous legislation had been authorized, and it contained a trigger. The Energy Secretary recommended storage, Bush would approve. Nevada could override Bush's authorization (a state overriding the President!), but then if both houses of Congress approved a Resolution overriding Nevada's veto by a bare majority, Yucca would be approved.

But when the Democrats barely held the Senate in 2002 (by 1 vote), it was thought that Majority Leader Daschle could keep it coming from the floor. Nope - it was required that any Senator could bring it up for a floor vote, it couldn't be debated nor filibustered.

Daschle tried to keep it out, but a few defecting Democrats, along with most of the Republicans passed the bill.

Granted, Yucca Mountain is still tied up in the Courts, but that has nothing to do with Congress. It's past their hands.

If something was similar - if the trigger could be enacted by the Executive Branch only, or a non-filibusterable resolution through Congress, that might be BARELY acceptable.

Cause you know the insurance companies wouldn't make the benchmarks anyways. Not even close.